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Why Letter: Why you should concentrate on building a child and not a bridge

October 4, 2017

Why you should concentrate on your child and not a bridge.

Kind of a weird title for a Why Letter isn’t it?

I guess it has a purpose.

When I first started working in Oak Ridge I had to drive to work every day from Knoxville. I was forced to drive over a bridge that had a name. It was the Dr. Herman Postma Memorial Bridge. I thought to myself, I’d really like my patients to love me enough that I could have a bridge named after me when I was gone.

That has been years ago that I thought that and I have had more thoughts since then. Thoughts like, who is Dr. Postma? To be honest, I did not know until I started writing this today who the guy even was. He evidently was the director of the National Lab here in Oak Ridge, TN. Did that bridge really do anything for the guy or his legacy? I had been looking at that sign for a decade and a half and didn’t even know a thing about him.

With that realization I knew that if you really want a legacy of what is really you, you will need to do it through your children. My dad has been dead for about 22 years and he lives through me every day. I look like him. I act like him in some ways and opposite of him in others, but both of those actions are because of him. I see traits of him in my children and I tell them about him and how they are like him. If he had a bridge named after him at home it would not be the same. He continues to live today through me and my children.

So my purpose of this letter is for you to concentrate daily on building your own memorial bridge so that you will not have been here on this earth in vain. Live life so that your children will want to carry pieces of you and pass them on to their children. The only way to truly become immortal is to have poured a good deal of yourself into your children. It’s also a great way to get to see your memorial before you have to die to get one.